Nintendo top honcho Satoru Iwata has said that Wii's situation in Japan "cannot be defined as healthy". It's probably not as bad as it sounds, they have sold ba-zillions after all.
"As you probably know, the current situation of Wii cannot be defined as healthy," he said, detailing this year's decline in Wii sales in Japan to well below the 50k unit sales mark per week.
A spike to almost 100k sales one week in the summer failed to last, and despite a price cut in September, Iwata says: "The price cut seems to have the least impact here than other parts of the world."
He adds: "It is our urgent mission to recover the momentum of Wii during the holidays utilising Nintendo's strength."
DS is propping up Nintendo's bank balance though, as Iwata says the portable continues to do well, thanks to Dragon Quest and Pokémon games.
"The total Japanese market size is less than one sixth of that of the US, and about one fourth of the four major European countries. There exists major differences in market size today," said Iwata.
"When we compare the unit hardware sales, Japanese sales are about two-sevenths of the US, and more than half of the four major European countries. It can be said that Japan today is the challenging market for home console software to sell," he added.
Iwata goes on to reason the Wii's software sales decline. "Since the software we launched at the end of 2008 did not go on to sell for an extended period of time, and we were not able to launch very strong titles in the first half of this year, we have seen a significant drop in software sales this year. As a result Wii Software unit sales share is just below 50 percent of the entire home console software market so far in 2009."
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is out here on November 20. That should sort things out.
Mike Jackson
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